AsianAtHeart

Could always sheath the (jointless) pipe in a segment of galvanized pipe. A nail would be hard-pressed to pass through it, though a drill would probably still penetrate with a bit of persistence. I'd be concerned about the quality of the joints. Those need to be joined very well, with full insertion, held for at least 30 seconds after inserting them. Many Thai "plumbers" are careless with the PVC joints, and they can actually blow apart sometimes under pressure, after a couple years' use. It's important to understand that "PVC glue" is not glue at all. It is a solvent that dissolves the PVC temporarily. After the two pieces have both partly dissolved and are pushed together, they fuse--basically welded plastic. Adding glue to the outside of the joint does nothing but delay the curing time--but I've seen many do this. It is not a sealant, nor a glue.

My parents taught me well. I was taught that some people have personalities that will bring instant addiction the first time they try it, and then be drunkards for life--so best not ever to have even a sip, as one cannot know, until too late, if such applies to him or her.

Nope. Not a drinker. I've never spent five minutes in a pub, much less an hour. Never consumed an alcoholic beverage in my life. You're perhaps used to thinking of all the rights and privileges granted to those who become citizens in your country. Well, Thailand is different. Once a foreigner, always a foreigner. In other words, even if you become a naturalized citizen, you will still be just a "farang" guest in the country in the minds of the Thai.

Did you know that foreigners who become Thai citizens still do not have the right to vote (or so I have been told)? Do you think if a foreigner became a citizen, he or she should have this right?

In some localities, the vans displaying the orange "rot rongrien" (school vehicle) sign in their back window may actually be privately owned, and the owners have a contractual agreement to work with the school. (Note that the sign is not permanent.) I don't see that kind here where I am, but I have seen them in some other places. Those vans usually do have windows that can open, as they are standard vans, typical for private use. With the sign there, one would think it was a school vehicle, and I remember my surprise when I learned otherwise. Might it be those you see where you are? That kind of "rot rongrien" doesn't usually stay parked at the school. The driver will take it back home and wait for the next run.

Most of the school vans that I have observed have unopenable windows--the glass is solid and does not slide nor is it hinged. The exception would be the front windows, such as where the driver sits. But who has a crank-style opener for a car window these days? Electric windows only open when the key is in and turned at least to the "accessories" position. So we can likely rule out the windows being opened. And those front windows would have been rolled all the way up this time of year in case of a downpour. Were it not the rainy season, some might leave them open a crack to keep the interior a little cooler. If the child-safety locks were engaged, as would be likely with a school vehicle if it had them, the main doors would not have been openable from the inside--again with the sole exception of the front doors. If the front doors had a locking mechanism that made it difficult to unlock from the inside--and I have had a car like this before where the lever was almost completely socketed in its sheath leaving virtually nothing to grip by which to raise it--these doors may have been too much for the child to open. And, as you point out, the horn may not have worked. Some vehicles don't engage the horn when the ignition switch is off, and some vehicles may have simply disabled it entirely for other reasons. It is possible that, owing to the childrens' sizes and their backpacks, etc. that they carried, they would have preferred being helped down from the van. A van tends to ride higher off the road surface than a car, and it can be quite a step. The teacher may have exited first in order to help the students out. I suggested probable reasons for this in the earlier thread. And here... The problem with installing emergency buttons is that students might enjoy using them as a prank, when no emergency existed. It would not be desirable to have such sounds emanating from the vehicle as it traveled through the town. Good questions. I don't know, either. But one thing is certain, egress for safety reasons does not seem prioritized in Thailand. Have you ever seen a building with an exit door equipped with a crash bar in Thailand? You know, the kind of door that may not even have a handle on the outside, but is easily opened from the inside just by running into/ramming the door? That's what the Mountain B venue needed. A couple or more doors like that added to it for egress could have prevented the fatalities. And these vans need an emergency exit--maybe out the back or up on the top even, as some American vans or buses would have. Friends at that age are much more egocentric, psychologically, and less likely to be mindful of a classmate. Perhaps she did try to get out, but couldn't manage to do so. One problem with this approach is that if the child had, say, fallen asleep, and had his or her seatbelt securely fastened (which they are now pushing for as well), by the time the child had awakened, he or she might have been affected by the heat already to the point where the child was unable to think clearly or act properly to remove the seatbelt--the first step toward reaching the front of the vehicle. Heat makes me drowsy, and, had it been me, I might not have awakened very soon at all.

All of your links are to news articles, classic places to find subjectivity and opinion in place of evidence-based science. For example, your first link quotes from social media posts, and appears to solicit the opinions of one doctor, one researcher, and one professor in support of their stance. No actual studies were cited in the article, apart from one which appeared to have reached an opposite conclusion and which they attempt to discredit by quoting from one of its researchers. ... I don't have time to analyze all of the news links you posted...just took that first one as an example.

People tend to see what they look for. Evidence to one person is pure coincidence to another, and fraud to yet another. Choose for yourself whom you will believe.

Why should the study authors' aims be considered a worthwhile fact to quote here? I want to know what their actual findings are/were, not what they are/were wanting to find. But please feel free to believe the facts of your choosing. I am pro-liberty of belief.

Appreciate your input. This is evidently a part of the new experience post-covid. Pre-covid they were taking something like the first 150 people to show up on a given day and set that as the day's quota. If you were desperate to get your service on a particular day, you were EARLY--just to make sure you'd be first in line. Most days did not reach the quota, but weekends might. I don't remember needing an appointment.

There can be many potential adverse effects due to autoimmune disease, ranging from rheumatoid arthritis to blood diseases to intestinal disorders. Some say there are over a hundred types of autoimmune diseases that have been identified. Consider this article, for a start: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34957554/ One snippet from the article: "Recently, new-onset autoimmune phenomena after COVID-19 vaccination have been reported increasingly (e.g. immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia, autoimmune liver diseases, Guillain-Barré syndrome, IgA nephropathy, rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythematosus). Molecular mimicry, the production of particular autoantibodies and the role of certain vaccine adjuvants seem to be substantial contributors to autoimmune phenomena."

Nobody said the fibre was for power. We're not talking about power lines here. The tangles of cables on the power poles are for communications, not power--all low-voltage (or no voltage in the case of fibre): telephone, cable company, and internet. The high-voltage power lines stay at the top of the poles, and are not usually a part of the tangles.

Patently false. Just search online for "spike protein effects." You'll find plenty. Here is just one article of many: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34100279/ If you just read the abstract, you will see that studies have shown "that the spike protein by itself (without being part of the corona virus) can damage endothelial cells and disrupt the blood-brain barrier. " I wonder why you are downplaying the effects of the vaccine when these are well known. Conflict of interest?

A cancelled ticket won't work for the Philippines--they will check that the ticket is still valid. Some companies allow a ticket to be canceled within 24 hours, but by the time a person has booked the ticket, and reached that leg of the journey in his or her itinerary, it is almost inevitably past the 24 hours. This is why some companies have sprung up that offer ticket rentals--you rent a ticket to use for entry purposes, that you will not actually fly on later. Unfortunately, I do not know of any of these companies directly, nor whether their tickets are possibly problematic at the checkpoints.

Someone might correct me, but AFAIK, Thai insurance covers the vehicle, not the driver. It's my understanding that if you are legal to drive in your own country, your license should be valid for up to six months in Thailand, and if you obtain an International Driver's License, you could drive for up to a year in Thailand. Longer than this and they will want you to have a Thai driver's license.

Baldness in a previously normal nine-year-old girl? Who are you kidding?

I am well aware that people can hold multiple passports. That is not the issue. Thailand, technically, does not care. But a Thai citizen is never supposed to use another passport, other than his or her Thai passport, to enter Thailand. That is what we were told in no uncertain terms. You may not appreciate the information....yet. You may regret having gone this route with your wife later when the experience becomes your own. Some get away with it, some don't.

I don't go to bars, and I was personally in that office to be part of the "interrogation" at the checkpoint. I heard the officer's words with my own ears--no idle tale coming from me. But what is firsthand from me is third-party to you, so you may choose to believe what you wish. All the best to you, and I hope you do not come up against the same kind of trouble we experienced. I agree with you that such intolerance is wrong, but it certainly does exist.

Why should it be banned for passengers? That would make no sense at all. Banning phone use for motorcyclists will create its own set of problems, one of which it will be just another law ignored, because the police rarely, if ever, patrol actual traffic, they work from checkpoints. There are people who use phones responsibly, and who may even need them, such as the delivery guys trying to find the location of their target address via GPS on their phone.

There's a reason many call it "the clot shot." It often causes microclotting in random places throughout the body. She should be happy that the clotting has obstructed her hair follicles instead of her optic nerve, as a 20-year-old friend of mine experienced in Laos after receiving the Sinopham shot--permanently losing his eyesight in one eye less than a week after the shot. He later visited Thai doctors, got MRI scans...the works, but there's no fixing what happened now--too late. The MRIs showed the clotting, but cannot restore the vision. Once the optic nerve has lost its blood support and decayed, that's it...blinded for life.

It looks like you might be getting yourselves into a mess of trouble. Thailand does not force people to have no dual citizenship, but they certainly do not like, and prefer not to know about, a Thai citizen becoming a citizen elsewhere as well. This is why a Thai citizen should never show Thai immigration a foreign passport. We've actually been hauled into a back office at a checkpoint and shouted at by an IO over this very thing--with them telling us point blank that a Thai should never use foreign ID at the checkpoint, and that they could refuse entry, or worse. (The threats were left ambiguous as to the full extent of potential consequences--so I don't presume to know what they would be.) It is my understanding that international laws state that a citizen of a country can use even an expired passport to return to the country of his or her citizenship. Your wife should not need any "emergency" travel document, provided she is not attempting to use her Thai passport to visit other countries--merely using it to return to her own.

That "van monitor" duty has fallen to teachers here where I am. Already over-worked teachers are made to come in early to go out with the vans on their rounds, then return home late after the evening rounds are done. Here this is done on a rotation basis, with teachers rotating on a three-week schedule (one week on, two weeks off). Keep in mind that a school has multiple vans, sent out in various directions, with each one needing the staffing, so some schools might require more frequent times for "on duty," and some schools may have less frequent. But the teachers are not specially tasked on the vans with accounting for each passenger: their role has been promoted as one of traffic safety. At each stop, the teacher is to get out of the van and personally escort the student(s) to the van, helping them to negotiate traffic, if need be, and perhaps shield them from the neighbors' dogs. Perhaps they are also to help keep students in line while on the bus--no fighting. I suspect that they are not the last ones off the vans once they reach the school, as they have other duties to attend to waiting for them. For example, it might be that same teacher's week to take the microphone at flag raising, and the students are already milling about the yard waiting for their teacher to start the ceremony. I tend to agree with you that the driver should have the primary responsibility, if indeed the child had been neglected in the van. The parents of this child question that scenario, and think something more nefarious may have been going on. We just don't know yet what exactly happened--and if someone had placed the child on the van, as the mother suspects, then the driver should not be guilty. Until the facts are known, we should be careful not to lay blame where it may not be due. When I drove bus, I always counted students either entering or exiting the bus, and made sure, with this mental tally, never to leave someone behind. If I lost count, such as if several students went through the door at almost the same time and I might have missed seeing one, I would walk back through the bus and manually do the head count, checking each seat. I never left anyone behind or on the bus.

You were likely just joking, and perhaps are already aware of this, but your Shakespearean grammar is incorrect. The word "thou" is the informal pronoun form, and, on account of subject-verb agreement rules, the verb to match it with here is "shalt." So, Shakespearean grammar will allow two forms: "you shall" (formal) and "thou shalt" (informal). In Thai, there is no direct equivalent because, with the exception of royal language, using more formal pronouns will still match the same verb as before.

You are undoubtedly correct; but I hope you will read my post again and note that I was not applying my use of the word "tragedy" directly to this particular case, but rather to the broader tragedy of the systemic failure on account of paranoia which I feel may have contributed to this particular individual tragedy.

While it perhaps should be as you suggest, the fact is that it is totally believable that no one would make an effort to locate a missing student. Here are the reasons: 1) Many students stay home these days to avoid being stigmatized for having symptoms of illness. People are deathly afraid of covid, and some students are even sent home if symptomatic. Absenteeism, for this reason, has never been more commonplace. 2) Teachers are over-burdened and over-worked. A local private school where I am has 56 students in one classroom, with one teacher, and the school has refused to split it into two classes (probably for economic reasons). Any teacher taking the time to look up the parents' contact information and make phone calls would be, at the same time, sacrificing time and attention that needs to be devoted to those present. And imagine the scenario with a dozen or more students absent from a class that size (sometimes nearly half the class can be absent on a given day). The teacher simply cannot follow up on all of those who are absent--at least, not right then, during teaching hours. This is Thailand. But even in America, some teachers wear adult diapers because they don't have time enough to go to the restroom owing to the requirement to be present with the students full-time throughout the day. Laws forbid leaving students unsupervised, even for a few minutes.